It took a long time to get to it, but we finally had the tree doctor in to clear up our multiple arboreal problems. To be honest, he's more of a tree executioner than doctor, but the two trees he came to remove in their entirety were already dead, and the couple of others he worked on are all the better for the removal of their broken bits, so this was all pretty surgical considering. It's also a relief, because our dead birch tree in particular was starting to look like it was going to fell itself one of these days, so we'll consider this a disaster we've managed to avert.